Atlantic City taking a risky plunge with return of diving horses

Stefanie Campolo/For the Star-LedgerHolding a 1930s photograph of an Atlantic City diving horse and rider, Atlantic City historian Allen "Boo" Pergament, of Margate, describes the diving horse setting on the Steel Pier, which was there for five decades.

ATLANTIC CITY — Down in Florida, Billy Ditty couldn’t believe the news.

"Hold on," he said Friday morning, setting aside the phone for a minute.

"The diving horses are coming back to Atlantic City," he shouted to his wife, Ruth. "Yes! The Steel Pier."

Decades ago, Ditty was a rider and trainer in the Steel Pier’s famed yet controversial diving horse act, in which a horse leaps off a platform — sometimes nearly 40 feet high — into a 12-foot pool of water below.

Now 72 and disabled, he relies on Social Security checks to pay the bills. His memories haven’t faded though. He keeps snapshots on his desktop computer, original postcards from the Steel Pier and harnesses that the horses once wore. As a boy, he fled an orphanage in New York to join the traveling circus. At age 16, the Atlantic City horses became his new family.

"I wouldn’t have the money to get back up," he said. "But I would love to see it if I knew the people were doing it right."

Earlier this month, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority presented a sweeping plan to revitalize Atlantic City, delivered in a master tourism blueprint. With growing attention on Atlantic City, especially as the new Revel casino prepares for a high-profile launch on Memorial Day, there is much to discuss, from the Boardwalk to safety and cleanup efforts.

But it is chatter about the return of the diving horses that’s stealing the show. The planned summer return of the act has generated a wide range of responses, from excitement and anticipation for the city’s revival to pure disgust and vitriol from animal activists.

"There have been personal attacks, vulgarity and threats," said Anthony Catanoso, the owner of the Steel Pier. In one colorful message, a protester announced plans to drag Catanoso himself to the top of the platform, cattle prod him and drop him into the pool.

The Humane Society of the United States issued a firm statement denouncing the horse act, saying it "should not make a comeback anymore than bear-baiting or dog-fighting should come to the Boardwalk."

A frontiersman and sharpshooter of the Wild West, William Frank "Doc" Carver, is generally credited with developing the diving horse routine in the 1890s. The act later came to Atlantic City in the 1920s.

Diving horses were even the subject of the 1991 Walt Disney film "Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken." The movie tells the true, although glamorized, story of Sonora Webster Carver, a rider who was blinded when she hit the water with her eyes open, detaching her retinas.

Ditty, the rider and trainer, said the proper way to dive is to "duck your head alongside the horse’s neck," making sure the horse goes into the water first. Later, after he married Ruth, he started to wear a helmet.

Photo Courtesy of Pier AmusementsHistoric photo of the famous diving horse at the Steel Pier on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

In his 16 years with the act, he never saw an injury to a horse, he said.

But he did witness the quick end to one horse’s diving career. The gelding, Black Beauty, panicked when he hit the water and wouldn’t move his legs. Normally, Ditty said, the horses start treading in the water and move toward the ramp to walk out of the pool.

"It was the first horse I found out couldn’t swim," he said. "We had to pull him out."

Another horse was spooked by a camera flash, and reared back, badly bruising the rider, he said.

The routine was usually the same: The horse would walk up a ramp and step onto a platform that slanted downward, leading it to jump into the water.

One horse, Lorgah, the funniest horse he ever trained, took his time for the crowd.

"He would get up there, and he would want to pose," Ditty said. "He’d play games. Then he’d finally dive."
CONTROVERSY REVIVED

Even back then, Ditty and his wife, Ruth, said animal activists protested the act.

They didn’t understand the controversy. They remember times when the horses, left unattended, actually walked up by themselves and jumped in.

"They liked it," Ruth said. "Don’t ask me why."

The routine remained a Boardwalk favorite until the late 1970s, when Resorts International bought the Steel Pier, ending the act.

Back in 2010, Gov. Chris Christie announced plans for an extensive Atlantic City transformation. Some dubbed it a takeover.

The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, a state-run agency, would be tasked with reforming the Shore resort’s troubled gaming and entertainment industries and developing new plans for a defined tourism district.

The master plan for that tourism district was approved by the authority earlier this month. Among the recommendations: new facades on the Boardwalk, possible development of light, wind and sound entertainment structures and the rebranding of Atlantic Avenue as "the main street" of the district.

The Steel Pier is expected to receive a $6 million loan from the CRDA to help pay for the costs of extensive renovations to the pier.

AP Photo/ Charles Rex ArbogastA horse is seen in this file photograph as it makes a plunge into a pool of water on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J., on June 25, 1993. Over the objections of animal-rights activists, the diving horses returned to the boardwalk after a 15-year hiatus, but closed before the summer had ended.

But it was Catanoso’s comments at the meeting, mentioning the return of the diving horses, that got more attention than any other proposal.

A BRIEF RETURN

Owners of the Steel Pier have tried to bring back the act before, but that didn’t last long.

In the summer of 1993, the owners signed a contract with a traveling Florida group dubbed the High Diving Mules. A miniature horse, a mule and a dog were part of the routine, said Catanoso. No human riders were involved.

At the time, the Steel Pier owners leased the land from Donald Trump’s organization.

Protesters yelled and displayed signs against the act. They were pretty creative too. "Make Trump jump," was a regular chant, Catanoso said.

After a successful summer, Catanoso said, the public pressure led to Trump’s request to stop the show before Labor Day weekend. He agreed, and the act has not been back since.

Now, the Catanoso family owns the Steel Pier property, which is located just outside the Trump Taj Mahal casino. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said Trump was traveling and unavailable for comment.

The Steel Pier is planning an amphitheater that will include other entertainment, such as divers and acrobats, Catanoso said. For now, the diving horse act is the planned finale of the show.

Catanoso said he’s hiring a private consulting firm to handle the specifics of the act, including recruitment and training. He did not answer a question about where the horses will come from. As far as the riders go, Catanoso plans to seek female trick riders with circuslike experience. They will likely wear one-piece bathing suits during the show, he said.

The horses will be "treated like gold," he said, and be housed in comfortable stables.

OUTRAGE AT THE ACT

Last week was a busy one at the headquarters of the Humane Society of the United States, where equine protection specialist Valerie Pringle works.

In just a few days, the Maryland office received dozens of calls and e-mails about the diving horses, she said.

Pringle has a lot of problems with the diving horse act. Her first concerns the name.

"It’s a misnomer to call it diving," she said. "That suggests that they’re willingly jumping. The platform slants, and they fall."

She also mentioned the famous Carter blinding incident, questioning how that impact would feel for a horse.

"What kind of training is involved to get a horse to do something incredibly unnatural?" she asked. "You’re forcing a horse up a ramp. There’s no way the horses can turn around."

She said she’s hopeful activists will speak up and voice their opinions in a respectful way. When asked about the protesters who have contacted the Steel Pier, Pringle said her group does not support any threatening or rude messages.

Catanoso said he’s always willing to have an educated debate.

"We respect people with a civil tongue," he said. But he hasn’t seen much intelligence, he said, in the past week.

"They’re blowing their credibility," said Catanoso. "I’m not going to get in the gutter with these people. I’d be coming down 10 notches."
GAMAL’s SECOND LIFE

When Cynthia Branigan thinks about the return of the diving horses, she’s unsure how to feel.

As a young girl on a 1964 trip to Atlantic City, she remembers having been in the sun all day and just seen the Beatles’ film "A Hard Day’s Night." She was already excited. Then, in the pitch-black of the night, she saw the bright spotlight on the huge grey horse, standing above the pool of water.

"It was quite stunning and theatrical," she said, pausing to remember the moment.

More than 15 years later, she would actually own one of the famous diving horses.

File photoCynthia Branigan of Solebury, Pa. is seen in a family photo from the 1980's exercising "Gamal," a diving horse from the Atlantic City Steel Pier she bought at auction when the diving horses act was discontinued in Atlantic City. Branigan now lives in Solebury, Pa.

In the late 1970s, when the original act ended, one horse named Powderface was sent to the slaughterhouse, several sources said. Another was auctioned off to a summer camp. A year later, in 1980, that horse was put back up for auction in Indian Mills, Burlington County.

Branigan, then 26 and working with an organization called the Fund for Animals, was sent to the auction with instructions to get the horse, Gamal. She bid $2,600, coming pretty close to her limit.

"He was an extraordinary animal," said Branigan, her voice breaking. "He was fearless."

Gamal died in 1989 at age 36. He was sort of like an old carnival worker, "tough and crusty," said Branigan, a 58-year-old New Hope, Pa., resident. But once he got to know you, he was very affectionate, she said.

And actually, he loved the water.

"He used to blow bubbles in his water bucket," she said, laughing.

At the same time, the idea of diving horses is nothing she "would ever promote," she said, adding that the world has evolved quite a bit from that trip in 1964. "It’s certainly a bizarre thing for a horse to dive, but of course, that’s also what makes people look."